Quote:
Originally Posted by melodydetective
Also - no frame edge sync? I mean, I don’t chase to anything these days - it’s all the video engine (shudder) or pushing Video Slave. Is that even a thing with onboard video?
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The Carbon very much looks like a product designed by Avid's Live audio group, including with AVB vs Dante and DADman from the OEM'ed DAD boxes. And clearly positioned as a music only product. All pretty confusing in a lineup with DAD OEM'ed boxes, legacy HD/DigiLink interfaces and now the Carbon. With MTRX and Carbon it really feels like there are different teams managing these products.
I worry the Carbon is what I call a 'tweener product that is jammed between others and does not get wide adoption, including here because a bunch of incompatibility issues with current Pro Tools HD and MTRX family users. 'tweener products often get defined as much as what they can't to as what they can. But hopefully Avid has done their market research here and know there is a set of quick adopters who don't care about these incompatibility issues..
The amusing thing to me is the Carbon is such an obviously copy of a UAD Apollo x8p, again another very music oriented interface. I wonder if Luna pushed Avid over the edge to get cracking on doing something here. But I like the idea of DSP hybrid as Avid have implemented it and that in concept at least challenges UAD and its always depended on DSP plugin processing. It's a pity that Avid did not realize this long ago. And sure there are lots of little things it looks like Avid did well with the Carbon box.
I'm mostly very curious how well the Carbon boxes will sell, I'd like them to do *really* well and that reinvigorate Avid's mid-range interface business, and ultimately have them come out with a half-sized Carbon box (i.e. copy the x4 next :-O) that I'd actually buy. But I wonder if that 'tweener issue will restrict sales. I'd love to hear what the folks at UAD are saying. If they are rolling around the floor laughing (Carbon price point, can't chain boxes, no Windows support, AVB vs Thunderbolt, dependency on Avid plugin ecosystem (Luna has AU native) etc.) or if they are furiously planning their next product changes. C'mon UAD folks just post your thoughts here...
Whether there should be cost reduced carbon boxes without DSP I'm not sure. That gets Avid competing with so many interfaces in a brutal market. Maybe it's easy to do and worth doing if it helped broader adoption and/or overall manufacturing volume. I'll admit there is something appealing about the hybrid model for me even if I don't really *need* DSP processing.